1999-02-05 04:00:00 PDT EAST BAY -- Most of Oakland has had its first drink there, say the regulars at the Alley piano bar and restaurant. And just as many have been thrown out by its longtime owner Jody Kerr.

The rest just pass by the pink and green neon-trimmed cottagelike facade on Grand Avenue day after day and never go in.

They ought to. They would enter a dim wilderness of sensory overload.

Imagine an alley, re-created by a drunken Walt Disney, lined with dark wood, Formica, street signage, weird paper ephemera and thousands of business cards. A clothesline above the bar dangles '60s-era chiffon slips. Beside it are a telephone pole, a street lamp and a lighted window showing off a curvaceous silhouette. The store window facade of an "Alley Loan Co." houses a mysterious collection of clothing and a ukulele.

It's a trip -- back to the time you, and maybe even your mother, had your first drink. "My mother came in in 1947, and she was only 17. She brought her sister's ID, and they used to carve their initials straight into the wall," says Nancy Gordon of Oakland.

Now business cards bedeck the walls. Brown, oily specimens sport phone numbers like Kellog 2-7300. Crisper ones list all sorts of occupations including one former presidential candidate: Jerry Brown.

"We had to take 'em down to fireproof 'em at one time, but from now on we spray 'em with retardant," says Charles Casprovince, 75, whose wife, Kerr, died four years ago after owning the bar for 45 years.

Behind the piano, Rod Dibble plays pre-'50s songs, as he has for 40 years. During "42nd Street," regulars will beat their change against the piano top to imitate tap dancers. "I'll never retire. No, I'm having too much fun," says Dibble, 66, a Berkeley native who walks to work five days a week.

The lowest point in Dibble's Alley days was the sad, songless night after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The most memorable moment was undoubtedly when a woman came in with her dog who she claimed could sing and dance.

"She put the dog on top of the piano bar, she started singing in a high-tone pitch, the dog started yelping and knocking over drinks and peeing and it was complete chaos!" Dibble says, chortling.

Today the 1933 bar attracts its share of college-age hip cats and kittens, drawn by the surreal atmosphere and retro beatnik cool.

Casprovince's niece, Jackie Simpkins, 34, bartends part time and will take over when her uncle goes to the big alley in the sky. She certainly isn't going to stand in the way of tradition.

"We say, 'Let's redo the bathroom.' But then they say 'No, leave it alone!' " she says. "It's old and they like the way it looks. That's why they come in here and that's the purpose of the place: not to change a thing."